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CNN Saturday Morning News

America's New War: Families Missing Loved Ones Follow Every Lead

Aired September 15, 2001 - 13:15   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Elizabeth Cohen has been for the last several days, as you know, at the Armory here in New York, where the missing have come. It is actually, Elizabeth, when we talked last night, I think we both had a sense that the mood there had shifted quite significantly from -- particularly from Thursday to Friday. Where are you today?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, today, the people that I'm talking to, Aaron, still have hope. We're actually going to speak with a woman who is looking for her brother, and she says she still has hope.

But we are hearing more people say that it is getting harder to maintain that hope. We talked actually with an American Red Cross worker a little while ago, who said, you know what, on Wednesday, people didn't really want counseling, they just wanted to go out into the hospitals and look. Today, more people are saying, "you know what, I need to sit down, I need counseling."

Some 3,000 people have been to the Armory here to register information about their missing relatives. And today for the first time, they have offered DNA testing. That means that they scrape the inside of the cheek of a close relative to the person who is missing, so that the DNA can be cross matched later on.

I want to introduce you to a woman of great strength, Mary Ortali-Melitez (ph), who is looking for brother, Peter Ortali (ph). Tell me, Mary, when was the last time someone heard from your brother?

MARY ORTALI-MELITEZ, BROTHER MISSING IN WTC: He was -- after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, he called my mother and said, "you know, a plane just crashed, turn on the news." After that, he called his wife, and then I believe he received a phone call from a friend in California also with the news of a plane crash. And then that's the last anyone has ever heard from him.

And then apparently, just from bits and pieces from people who worked with him on the floor, you know, they evacuated the building, announcement came on, everyone was leaving the floor. The last person leaving said no one was left on the floor. And we just haven't heard anything.

He did appear on the SurvivorList.com and also on a NYC.com list. A different phonetic spelling, but you know, it is just seemed too kind of ironic not to be him, and then there was a -- he -- the name of the SurvivorList -- that list went down, and then the other list went off -- you know, is not on the Internet again today.

So you know, the Red Cross had said as soon as we heard it, that there was really -- there was no validity to it, all they can go by is what the hospitals are actually giving them. So you know, we kind of -- our family has been back and forth. People came up on Tuesday to go to the hospitals and go some of the searching. They left yesterday. We came up yesterday, and kind of doing the same thing. Going back to all the hospitals, putting out more pictures, I mean just in the hope that, you know, if you took the stairwell with him, if he was next to you, did you see him, was he helping somebody?

You know, him and one of his good friends, Dennis McQ (ph), his boss, Eddy Marnovich (ph) -- I mean, these are people, you know, that we used to see all the time, and now it seems kind of surreal that, you know, I'm hanging up missing pictures of my brother all over New York City. It is unbelievable. But we do, we still have hope.

You know, I ran into a lot of -- I ran into two doctors last night who said you have to continue to have hope. There are -- they are getting through all that stuff, you know, every minute, every hour down there, you know, and telling how hard all the people are working down there. So I mean, we're hopeful, we still are. We really are.

COHEN: Thank you. Thank you, Mary.

ORTALI-MELITEZ: Thank you so much.

Mary who is one of the thousands who is looking for lost relatives here, looking at the Armory on the corner of 26th and Lexington -- Aaron.

BROWN: I -- when people talk of their hope, it is very moving, I wonder if at times like this, there's a -- I don't mean this to sound cold, but there is a terrible sense of helplessness here. Someone you love a lot is gone. You need to go someplace, do something to shake yourself with the helplessness, and I wonder if some people are coming down just to be with others who are in their situation?

COHEN: Well, you know, it's interesting, because the counselor who we talked to earlier said a woman who was looking for her husband said, "I'm here, because if I go home, I will feel as if I have given up on looking for my husband."

But I think it is more than just wanting company. There was a gentleman that we talked to who was looking for his brother, Pablo Ortiz (ph). He saw on a list that an Ortiz (ph) was listed as being in a hospital way up on the Upper West Side. And he ran, got in the cab, went and looked, and it was the wrong Ortiz (ph). So there are some leads that people are trying to follow.

BROWN: Elizabeth, thank you. Elizabeth Cohen at the Armory.

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